Extremes.

On my walk to the gym today, I saw two furry creatures. It was the golden retriever puppy tied to the bicycle that caught my eye. Two feet away, its companion, a chicken, bobbed in the neon light glow.

Odd, I thought. One a pet, the other, food.

Yet, in my mind, this scene so perfectly captured China.

China is in the midst of reform. Gone are the days of Red Coats and clear communist agenda, instead, clean energy initiatives, electric car innovation and strides in stem cell research blanket the headlines of international newspapers, China has been busy. They're taking our technology and actually using it. According to the NYT, stem cell research has magnified to a record setting scale. A research center in Beijing holds the largest concentrated number of stem cells. What's more, China is leading all of these technological advancements. The result, a large middle class is emerging and given the sheer magnitude of China's vast population, this is HUGE. Welcoming with this new status is "new China". Golden retriever puppies, iPhones (& foreign teachers) imported from the U.S., anything one could want.

It's not just Beijing and Shanghai that have reflected this, even relatively rural Zhengzhou has wealth exploding like Old Faithful. New development is constant. For want of land, the new campus of my school has been pushed away from its central downtown location to the outskirts. Evidence of Zhengzhou's rapid sprawl is gleamed every commute, peasants rake the corn harvest over the empty road lanes while their crops border the concrete. Once inside the campus, our second apartments represent the new world, one with flat screen tvs and dishwashers.

YET, the past still lingers. The Luo Cheng Rock Climbing Tourist Festival showed me that first hand. Rural farmers don't know what an iPhone is, they have yet to use a computer.

Chicken meets pure bred and its all Made in China.

(If you want to read more about China's emerging power, turn to the NYT's recent article about China's three faces.)

Groggy and confused.

It's 6 a.m. and I'm up on a Sunday for my second day of work. Yes, work for me starts on the weekend. The Chinese like to give you holidays off, but don't be confused, you'll make it up, on your weekend.

So, anyway, as I finally roll awake, I see an email from one of my traveling friends from the rock climbing competition. The results were unsurprising, the Chinese won, no question. I had already assumed that. However, what I didn't expect (AT A "CLIMBING" EVENT) that they would have a beauty contest also. They chose 10 confused maidens and mates as the winners, oddly enough I was one of them, and as Leah told me, had I not left early I too would have been leaving with 500 yuan in my pocket.

Odd? Yes, very. Only in China.

Good morning!

My address.

Here's a paste of my address in Zhengzhou. I like mail. muahaha

I have postcards to send out in return, that is once I figure out the Chinese mail system. Just be warned, after I get a Chinese helper to assist me, it can take upwards of 10 weeks to arrive in the good ol' USA. That's five weeks longer than I've been here.


Henan College of Education
21 WeiWu Lu
ZhengZhou, Henan 450014
People’s Republic of China

Banquet--Yanhui.

(Photo from a banquet in Beijing, words about Zhengzhou to come soon.)

"Rock Clibming"

"You've got to be careful," warned the man in charge of the festival, a foreigner.

"They don't know how to handle you. It's like the officials have brought in a cage of tigers and have just let them loose. They're scared of what you may do."

They, was the rural town of Luo Cheng in the southern Chinese province of Guangxi. Only six months prior, the first foreigner had entered the region. A white faced waiguoren was still an enigma here.

As one of the poorest regions in China, especially for the province, the Chinese government was looking to sprinkle some of its excess funds to the local economy. Rather than deposit a lump dollop of yuan directly in the farmers' pockets, the government was looking to the future--tourism.

However, the small town of a few thousand, small for any country's comparison, but especially China's, had no infrastructure. What it had, authenticity and the surrounding karst mountains--a climber's dream.

So, the "2010 Guangxi Luo Cheng 'Rock Clibming' Tourist Festival" was born. With a cash reward of 5,000 yuan for both the top male and female climber, a sum many times more than the local farmer's annual salary of 350 yuan, any serious Chinese climber came.




I had been in Yangshuo for a day too long. I had ticked off the list of my "must-do's." Bike and hike Moon Hill, jump off the bridge on the Lijong River, rock climb, and drift down the Li River in a bamboo boat, as well as unexpectedly swim across the same river (much to the surprise of the boat master, when he refused to lower his bargain price of 50 yuan per head to drift us across, we jumped in and swam the length instead). I'm fairly confident I won't grow an extra toe.

On the travel scale, it had been an 8. Yet, I still wanted something more.


"Free food, free stay and climbing. No catches," read a poster hanging on the city wall across from my hostel.

Centered on the poster a hill greater than Yangshuo's famed Moon Hill, noted equally for its unique shape and location, as well as its visitors, including President Nixon, dominated the gloss. I didn't know what the "2010 Guangxi Luocheng Rock-Clibming Tourist Festival" was, but the post-it attached held the subliminal message that said, "Come climb." My mind stuck on one word, FREE.

I had only two days left in my travel time in Guangxi province before my plane was scheduled to take off from Guilin back to Zhengzhou, but as if I already knew the competition's slogan, Think less, climb more, I set my alarm for the 9 a.m. bus.

I'd figure out the rest of the details later I thought as I drifted to sleep on the hard bunk bed.


An hour after the planned time ("China time" usually happens fashionably late), we disembarked and I, along with 30 other climbers, from the professional to the novice, were sharing a gravel road with a water oxen and its owner in the middle of karst country. We were an odd sort, representing 17 different nationalities to be exact, and looked the rough and dirty shape of a backpacker. In Luo Cheng, our arrival caused a minor traffic jam. As people grabbed their ropes and quick draws from below the bus, equipment as odd as we were, the officials swiftly instructed us to step inside.

We were the tigers.



Not until 1987 did climbing, the way we know it, arrive in China. Since then, Yangshuo has become a climbing mecca, with over 600 bolted routes, it easily ranks as the country's best place to climb on. Chris Sharma has even touched rock here.

Five hours away, accessed by single lane gravel roads, at times, Luo Cheng had the same karst mountains, but none of the bolts. Where people are more concerned about food for tonight's dinner, the pronation of one's climbing shoes becomes a moo point, if they even understood why you would want to crunch your foot at all. Foot binding is recognized as illegal here now.

Unlike the history of China, a long and complex tale, China's climbing history is similarly as short as the Qin dynasty, its reign lasting only a mere 15 years on the long line of emperors. Yet the effects of the Qin Dynasty still define China today, the construction of the Great Wall in the North and the 7,500 unearthed life-size terracotta warriors in Xi'an. For Luo Cheng, the new sport of climbing in China was going to define the area and at the same right, be the spring board for its rise to success. Naturally, the only way to mark this was with a festival equal to the inauguration of a president.

Obviously when I had hopped the bus to Luo Cheng, I hadn't anticipated the significance of the event. The presence of our foreign faces was the catch to "free".



As a guest, I was declared a foreign VIP. As an English teacher in China, I am also a "Foreign Expert" in a week I'll have the documentation to prove it. If you want attention, come to Asia, your need to feel special will dissipate fast with each flash of a Nikon, usually inches from your face. Being a foreign volunteer for the Olympics prepared me for this kind of assaulting attention, my first full day in China started with a front page photo in Tsinghua University's campus newspaper, an unflattering picture of our arrival at the airport. Yet, I still had a lot to learn about China and its face to the world.

Things were about to get weird.


It began with our gift packages, a quick drying bright blue shirt emblazoned with the words, I (heart, in the pattern of the Chinese flag) Luo Cheng, along with a matching red hat adorned with the climbing logo and a polo of the same color, sized from XXXL to XXXXL. Apparently part of their assumptions about foreigners included a notion that we were all sumo wrestler trainees. We took our bags to our free hotel rooms and rushed to our free hotel buffet lunch that would prelude our free dinner banquet that would start an hour later, down the street in another hotel.

If you've never been to a Chinese banquet, set your mind open. It's the center stone of Chinese business and is a practiced tradition that usually involves Chinese people attempting to drink their guests under the table. Gan bei, China's version of cheers, literally means "bottoms up!" (I'll write more about this later in a separate blog post detailing HMC's first banquet. It involved many shots of baijo and a few trips to the bathroom for one unfortunate victim.)

Complete with chicken feet and Peking duck, the banquet featured the usual Chinese delicacies, however, as I was leaving I spotted the unusual visitor, a tall, tall man. In China, I'm a giant, in the metro I can usually peer over the black sea of heads. The hushed voices surrounding me said, that's the tallest man in the world.

What was he doing here? I had no idea, but I snapped a picture regardless. Time for the prey to become the predator, it only seemed fair that it was my turn to take a picture.

Next, we walked along with the masses to the headline event,"Enjoy the fun: Township of Melao Ethnic Minority", hosted by the Luo Cheng Communist Party Committee. As it turned out, the festival wasn't about climbing. The reality, It was a showcase of Luo Cheng for the sake of tourism. When we arrived, several thousand already sat occupying the sea of plastic stools. The fifteen part act included songs and dance by many of the minority groups within China, including a solo sung in Mongolian by the tallest man I had spotted earlier. During act 11, two of the foreign "VIPs" clapped on stage to It's a big, big world and the crowd roared. Three hours later, the madness finally ended with a short show of fireworks.

We were then instructed to go directly back to our hotel and sleep. Tomorrow would bring more of the same, another banquet and a "friendship building" tree planting ceremony. Climbing wouldn't actually start until the third day of the festival. By then I would be back in my bed in Zhengzhou, or so I thought.

More to come.

Travels: Part One

Traveling alone in Guangxi province, I had booked an airplane ticket expecting anything, well, I was mentally prepared for anything. The itinerary was pretty open, it included a hike through the Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces, followed by a quick tour of the sights of Guilin and a chunk of time in Yangshuo. Then, of course, the best rock climbing of China beckoned.

The other teachers were jealous of my time off, with good reason. They had sophomores to entertain, while I was spending my days sleeping in, sending emails, working out and planning my travels to southern China.

The freshmen I was teaching were still in military training and if the rumors were true that the incoming students only had an English vocabulary that extended to "What's your name?" I needed this holiday--I justified.

So after a dorm night stay in Guilin with five boys that snored in a off-beat rythum most of the sweaty night, I left Guilin in a rush and headed to the famed Dragon's Backbone.

Ping' an, arguably the most beautiful village in the area, as well as the one closest to a road (and buses), was a tourist clusterfuck. With my full pack loaded on my back, I hiked the steep steps away from the crowds, restraunts touting "Local and Western food" combos and the few tourists being carried (literally) on beds up the high stone steps. Farther up the hill, in the shade, I found a Yao woman selling postcards and minority flair. Target--I was about to be accosted for yuan--I knew the routine all too well.

"Sleeping? Sleeping?" she asked instead.

I had read in my Lonely Planet guidebook that homestays were possible in some of the remote villages, but instead I just walked away. I had finally found the path for the hike that linked the villages of the Dragon's Backbone that LP had also recommended.

But the woman dressed in a traditional black skirt with black hair that reached equally long, persisted.

"No, come stay with me. Sleeping, yes! You can meet my beibei." She motioned the pillow with her head resting on her hands, dare she risk that I didn't understand.

I weighed the idea, 20 yuan (~$3 U.S.D.), an experience. I had no friends in Guangxi province, but for tonight I'd have an adopted Yao Chinese family, complete with a baby who happened to have a shaved head with a hair tuft fluff on his crown and a curiosity in me that never dissipated.

I agreed, after much silence, carpe diem and all that. She followed me closely, satisfied with her day's earnings as she corralled me, the foreigner, her night's guarantee bonus. As we walked, she pointed out the crops we passed, potatoes, chilies, rice, shouting out both their English and Chinese aliases. She pointed, "Maize, you know?" I laughed, oh yes, I knew that one well. We continued in this way, chatting sporadically, as a rural minority woman, she knew a good smattering of English, I not so secretly hoped my students would compare.

Three hours later, my calves burned from climbing the steep steps, and my clothes hung damp from the mix of sweat and rain, but we had arrived to her house--a wooden structure supported small wooden slits, little toothpicks I wouldn't have trusted for my own house. A hand full of gaping holes in the floor hinted to the great distance that separated the wooden board floor to the dirt/trash ground below.

Yet with so little, the Yao family shared the spirit of unending hospitality.

Upon arrival, the woman pushed me into the outside room that functioned equally as a laundry room, bathroom and shower. The cold water felt refreshing and when I exited, food lit up the table. Rice, vegetables and no meat, the distinguisher of money and class in China. If you can afford it, you eat meat, even if it may be dog.

I ate to my satisfaction. I knew the truth that what I didn't finish would be the family's dinner. Besides, the night before in Guilin produced enough attention to hint to me that my body didn't fit in China and didn't need that extra rice. "If you like, we can find your size, much bigger."

I soon left the home and hiked the two hours back to road traffic, I had other things on my mind. I was heading to Yangshuo, where I read that foreigners were as abundant as the towering karst mountains.

More to come...

A story of humiliation.

I'm back from my travels, a few days late, but safe and well rested even after the unexpected 20 hour train ride I had to endure, but more about that later.

A story of humiliation to share before the good times begin...




There are infinite ways to embarrass oneself, I know. During my first lecture on American culture, I found yet another one.

As part of the deal to get free reign to travel, my waiban asked me to give the first presentation on American culture. Each teacher has one slot a semester. This didn't scare me. I enjoy public speaking, most of the time, and have even competed at the state and national level in various speaking contests. I can comfortably speak about STDs, domestic violence and even act like a crazed victim of the Salem Witchcraft Trials. None of that, however, prepared me for the crucifixion of the Chinese student audience. It could unnerve Obama, I'm sure of it.

In my naiive mind, I thought it would be easy, despite the warnings from the veteran teachers of S2 (a letter combination threat I didn't understand and undoubtably neither will you--until you've experienced the horror.) Did they know any English? For some, it was questionable.

Still, unaware, I prepared a 70 slide powerpoint presentation, the title American Cult Obsessions: Fantasy. I defined the popular genre and detailed the presentation with odd, quirky, (in my mind), facts and pictures about the big 3--Harry Potter, Twilight and Lord of the Rings. I was quite proud. I even had a definition from Urban Dictionary of a Twihard. (Just say it aloud and try not to break a smile.)

My fellow teachers laughed hard and wished me in a tone too serious, good luck.

The talk was suppose to be informal and the crowd was moderately small, the freshmen had yet to arrive from military training. I smiled, this will be fine, a good warm up for when my real teaching days begin.

Then it all happened like a slow motion train wreck that no one could stop. The powerpoint didn't work. I had saved the new version of the program and the old computer couldn't run it.

"Can you wing it?" Lily, the Chinese teacher watching over, asked.

"Uh, a;lskdfj." Inaudible noises, not words, tumbled out my mouth.

It was hopeless. We both knew it was a request, not a question.

My voice cracked on the microphone, hello. They echoed me back in a lion roar, HELLO!

The details after that are fuzzy as I've already tried to block them from my memory.


It involved a lot of nervous laughter, forgotten slide details, blank stares, etc, etc, etc. Twihard soon became a long lost joke. If I believed the hands raised, only two people in the room had seen HP. That's a Chinese classroom lesson of a lie. I tried to coax their enthusiasm with candy, however, the group moaned with disapproval as I waved the sugary treats in the air. Fail, again. In the back row, the other new teachers watched and grimaced. In their agnony for me, Gillian bit off two of her nails in nervousness and Wes pinched his cheek gums, in a failed attempt to stop the flow of his laughter.

Then the worst happened.

As I tallied the Team Jacob/Team Edward score (yes, that's real, I was desperate), I watched the chair wobble in space and crash on the stage from my not so gentle collision with it. My face resembled the over ripe stage of a cherry tomato, but I didn't move a muscle to pick up the chair. Neither I nor the students acknowledged the thunderous tumble, except for my foreign teacher friends in the back row, bursting with laughter.

I was their entertainment for the evening.

When I finished, Jacob had an embarrassing 2 votes. One being mine. Communism has still left its mark in the Chinese classroom and no one likes to be singled out, especially singled out with the current mess I was.

The pain continued for another TWO hours of roasting. Throughout students darted the presentation in a not-so-subtle shuffle out the door. I believe we all wondered, when will this end? Finally, during my screening of the Twin Towers, the bus driver signaled my end, it was time to go.

I had survived, but I needed a stiff drink.

I'm back!--details to come soon.

Travels.

The freshmen have arrived, but they're still finishing boot camp.

As so, I'm taking advantage of my last days of freedom with a trip to the south. I'll be back next Saturday.

It's raining and has been for the past three days.

My "drying room" is flooded.

Luckily, however, I now have cheap Chinese dvds to keep me company. True Blood, Lord of the Rings, Planet Earth, check, check, check. Plus, Gillian now has my guilty pleasure of Gossip Girl. We call it "research" as it's a favorite among the Chinese girl population.

Evidence.

Ostrich--Tuoniao.

Before we even set out for the sticks of Zhengzhou, I imagined our experience at the Ostrich Park to be something out of a reality television show. Something like the Japanese mockery of amusement, that show which name is at a lost, but the contestants fall from all sorts of weird contraptions into water, slammed against boards, anything to lose face and hear the loud noises shrill to their stupidity.

I wasn't eager to experience any of this, but karma has a way of being a bitch sometimes.




Saturday morning came with a spiliting headache. That previous Friday the foreign teacher crew had decided to hit the town of ZZ. Of course, we had to welcome it in its proper salute with Bijo, the staple of Chinese alcoholism, imagine diesel as a flavor for hard alcohol. It goes down your throat, warms you up and makes you think, certainly I am shortening my life for each second that this white fire lingers in my body, but we decide to cheer to it anyway, several rounds. We're young. Besides at this moment, I'm still unsure that an ostrich may shorten my life anyway. Death by beak picking, perhaps I'd make the New York Times weird and unusual obits. What an odd wish, yes, I know.

We rejoice the night and our newness to China. I feel great, apparently the fire of bijo has lingered, but as we arrive at the bar we've already come to know too well (ZZ is still pretty small and its expat community, much smaller), I see misery comes with company and Agnus, a large Australian man delivered us pain in the form of whiskey shots, a number too many. As I told the Australian farmer, huh, that's a name that only reminds me of one of my father's tv diversions, The World's Strongest Man Competition and its shining star, a horse-of-a-man contestant from Scandinavia. Clearly that should have been a siren of a warning, back away, quickly.



I could barely concentrate, I was in a serious world of hurt, as we drove past shacks, Chinese grafitti, fields, people, people, and even more people on bikes and mopeds, after all this is China. My mind jumbled. Did we really high step and heave our bodies over the campus' iron gate last night? That was unnecessary. Finally, rising upon the flat land, we see the painted dinosaurs on cement. We must be here. Dinosaurs, hmmm, not what we expected, but then again what did we expect? We were at a Chinese amusement park, which happened to greet us with a 30 foot tall golden ostrich.

We sauntered in. We were ready to play and I already had my camera out.

I thought I had been desensitized by my first trip to China, but then again, I hadn't heard of the rare sport of ostrich riding before. Clearly, this year was going to be *unique*.


It began with feeding the ostriches. All 100 of them. I had a flashback of Peru. Had I become that tourist? The llama, ostrich feeding oddball that transverses the world for the weirdest exotic animal cooing. If I hadn't made the exclusive club yet, I was making quick strides to it. At least this time I didn't have an embarrassing amount of Chinese/Peruvian flair. Though, I don't think they sell ostrich hats, scarves and friendship bracelets, or it may have happened.

As I flicked the green nosh at the prehistoric looking creatures, watching their beady eyes stare me down, I smiled with anxiety.

"I am not riding one of these," I stated to no one in particular, hoping someone felt the same way.

Granted, these were the babies, of sorts. Their fate, most likely, to become the king riders or our meat kabobs later that day for lunch.

Quick to rebuttle, Wes responded, "Yes, but when again will you ever be able to say hey, I rode an ostrich. I'm doing it."

Words that always haunt me, to jumping off a bridge in Auckland's city harbour, hydro speeding (basically boogie boarding with flippers) down a class III+ whitewater Chilean river, to dancing on a homemade platform of couches at an Iowa country party. If it only existed there, I had to try it, damned be my pride.

Unlike the theme parks of my youth, however, in China, the danger is real. This, we had to remind ourselves several times. We called it authentic. Before stepping up to the 50 foot long zip line, we asked, while staring at the rusting harnesses, is this dangerous? Yes, it is, the operator smiled. He didn't even pretend to lie. "See you never," I mumbled.

But really, our troubles began before that. This is where that Japanese humiliation show comes to haunt us. As a warmup, one by one, we decided to zipline across the water. A mere 20 feet. It was short, but the risk, if you didn't fling yourself fast enough with the start up run, get stuck in the purgatory of the middle and fall in the murky brown Chinese water. The risk being contamination and damnation of embarrassment. I watched the young Chinese boys lift their knees above the water and smoothly rattle to the opposing side. Their smiles read simple, clean fun. I was in.

We had all taken a turn, with 100% success, minus one butt drag with resulting unpleasant dampness and as so were cajoling our last member left, who was on the fence.

She didn't like water. She was unsure if she would make it. We didn't listen.

"Do it!"

Repeating the familiar mantra, "No regrets, when will you be able to do this again?"

"What's the worst that could happen?"

Okay, she was in, and then it happened. She got stuck and plop, down with a big splash. It was the worst that could happen. It was in her hair and up her nose.

"Oh NO!" Then laughter I couldn't restrain. The giggle fits had seized me, again.

One of the Chinese boys we had watched model the zip line before, jumped in and rescued the pulley. All we could mutter was, "Yep, the danger is certainly real."

After a quick water wring through, we were all dry, well, almost, and wandered to the rock climbing wall. I had no idea what to expect. Unlike the roots of yoga or tai chi, rock climbing is still a relatively new sport throughout the world and again, there was the danger factor at this amusement park.

The holds slid and some were caked in dirt, but the novelty of doning a military camo jacket while climbing was enough to excuse the first two offenses. Again, I wasn't here to get a workout. I just wanted to ring the bell at the top and hear through the megaphone cupped in our Chinese chaperones hands, "You can do it." And again, "Congratulations, you are alive, you are a hero now!"

Would all my climbing friends approve of my current motivations? Probably not, but China comes with sense of humor you must attain to survive. I've seen and heard of the boil, China rage, it sends people home in a fury.

We spent the rest of the afternoon, doing the usual. Jumping, suspended in the air by launching off with a Chinese man grasping onto what most would regard as getting personal too soon, followed by eating ostrich eggs, ostrich meat kabobs, and playing a game that involves punishment in the form of singing or dancing. Jingle Bells was a big hit.

I thought about my friends turning off their alarm clocks soon in the wee morning hours in Iowa to begin the tailgating season, doning black and drinking copious amounts of beer, armed with flasks. My how my life has changed and I hadn't even riden the ostrich yet.



To be continued...


But as I promised, I would at least die, I mean try, yes.

We found the two ostriches that the park kept as riding entertainment. They looked large, bored and angry, but I fork up the 10 yuan charge. A $1.50 to ride an ostrich, I'll take it.

Hopping onto an ostrich is awkward, I can assure you that. You stand on a pedastool like a toddler and shimmey up to its neck, resting somewhere near its hump. Finally, the wings are draped over your legs and the last words of warning are, "Hold onto its dirty wings or..." As you take your first strides under the wings of this bird, you don't want to hear the end of that sentence.

As a novice, I quake, but it's not bad. I imagine it's like riding a horse bareback, except instead of holding onto its mane, you madly grasp its flightless feathers. I only have one moment of terror. Eager to deploy me, the ostrich cranes its neck back to warn me in a pecking motion. My New York Times moment?! My responding squak sends us both into a moment. Let's end this--now.

Eventually, we all give it a try, this time with 100% success. What an odd, odd day, we mutter as we chalk up our day with fluffy pink ostrich pens and a motorcycle cart ride back to town.

Oh, the day I rode an ostrich.

Names--Mingzi.

In China, most young people have two names, a family name, followed by a given name and the second, well, is an alias of curiosity to any native English speaker. Corpse, for example, was one such name.

Bloated after another starchy meal of rice and variations of the same greens, meat and sauce to flavor the fare, the other foreign teachers and I sat back in our chairs, already set into a routine ourselves, and turned to the topic of usual. China versus us. Not a competitive jostle of who will win all, as it may sound, as we know we hold a large amount of debt to the country, but a conversation of inquiry. What makes China so different? That loaded question which intrigues me to return yet again. But this time arriving knowing that the more you learn about China, the more confused you become. Such was our conversation about the irony of Corpse as a selected English name. Did he know he was suggesting that he was a walking, clearly talking, dead body?



On our arrival, three smiling Chinese faces greeted us. They didn't need a sign, though they stood waving our lettered names anyway. Foreigners, check. From what I could tell, we were the only waiguorens (foreigners) exiting the plane. Turning to Joseph, China's most diverse visitor (presumably from the attention he has garnered with his long crown of dreads and contrasting dark skin), they inquired, "You must be Jewshep".

I could barely stifle my laughter. I light up like the Northern Sky in awkward moments and try as I might to block that juvenile part of me, it just comes out more forcefully until I can't breathe from superfluous laughter. If you're reading this, you've probably seen it before.

"Joe, actually," my comrade responses cooly. Not one to easily stress in moments such as these.

Like a cackle of barnyard chickens I can't understand, they sound off, "Jew, Jew, Jew, yes, yes, yes?!"

"Joe."

"Oh, yes, Jew."

This game persists until Joe finally accepts the obvious, but minor name misdemeanor. Jewshep it is.

I just smile as they repeat my name with a distinct A-nnna. I can't be mad or slay them like I would a friend for the same offense. These sweet smiling woman, half my size, have just forced my overweight luggage out of my hands and swiftly carted it to the awaiting cars. In our abrupt arrival to Zhengzhou, I can't shake the immense feeling of what these women have done to please our every whim and whimper. My Visa struggles and the rapid speed they must have processed my papers. On top of it, as I've learned recently, making just our meager 5,400 yuan (around $800) per month, we easily fall into the 80th percentile for income. For ZZers, 1,000 yuan a month is considered decent. Behind the President and our waiban, we make the most in our school, plus we get free rent and two apartments, as I've mentioned before.

This reality still amazes me everyday, especially as I soak in the bloat of the free post-meal glory. It's more than a feeling of being full, it's a greasy saturation of privilege from birthright. I'm uneasy as I eat my rice and a tug from my youth rises up, "finish up, a child in China is starving".